It’s time to get back to the ethos of Warwick Jailbreak

On Saturday February 10, two friends and I set off on our journey to get as far as possible from campus by taking part in Warwick Jailbreak. As the event has become popular in recent years, many of you might know what Jailbreak is about: ‘36 hours, no money, where will you go?’ is the description you can find on the SU webpage. It sounds quite self-explanatory, but at a closer look the rules appear designed to be delibately ambiguous.

This year, the participants had to fundraise for Newlife, a charity for disabled children. In order to take part in the event, a minimum of £60 needed to be raised online per person. However, did the fundraise continue after the countdown had begun? No one can fully answer this question.

As the Warwick Jailbreak rules state, participants are not allowed to use their own money on transport, but instead use ingenious ways to get free rides and tickets to reach their destinations. However, it seems that raising money for transport has become silently accepted.

‘For charity’ were two of the hardest words I’ve ever had to pronounce, as I felt that I was not only lying to them but to myself too.

Therefore, several teams such as last year’s winners take the Warwick Jailbreak challenge much more lightly and raise money in order to buy coach or plane tickets. How is this helping charity? This is exactly what we were asked while fundraising in London. Our team stuck to the rules and got free transport to London, but once we got there we had to ask ourselves how we were going to get further. Unsure if it was acceptable to raise money for our transport, we started explaining to the people who were kind enough to listen what Jailbreak is and that we were doing the challenge for charity.

‘For charity’ were two of the hardest words I’ve ever had to pronounce, as I felt that I was not only lying to them but to myself too. And trust me, the three of us spent a large amount of time out of those 36 hours trying to find the right words to tell the wholesome truth. We tried to show people the JustGiving page in order to persuade them to donate straight to the charity and help us with money for transport only if they wished to. Unfortunately, not many of them were keen to unlock their smartphones in the rain to do so, and they instead chose to give us cash donations.

‘Is it for transport or for charity? I trust you can make this decision’, a kind woman replied as she handed me a £20 note. I didn’t foresee her reply and I definitely did not expect her to donate so much money. Later, as we were heading to Victoria Coach Station, me and my teammates were thinking the same thing: if we don’t get free transport from there, we should drop out and donate all the money.

It is deeply wrong to associate yourself with a charity while fundraising for something else such as transport

And so we did. Five teams including ours were at Victoria Coach Station at that time; some were waiting for rides for which they had paid, while some others were still trying to get free rides. And there we were, wearing our Newlife t-shirts, when we realized how Jailbreak is a great concept if you’re doing it for fun and you don’t include raising money ‘for charity’.

Regardless, it’s time for Warwick Jailbreak to take a stance and stick to it. It is deeply wrong to associate yourself with a charity while fundraising for something else such as transport – an activity which has been tacitly encouraged since the participants were told to wear the Newlife t-shirts. Therefore, the most obvious and moral solution would be to ban bucketing or other types of street fundraising after the countdown begins. Raising money for the chosen charity should only be made online in order to assure transparency, and the teams might even have more fun by not relying on any money at all.